


Exchange

by Anya (aCrowdOfStars)



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aCrowdOfStars/pseuds/Anya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From prompt "I want either Sherlock or Donovan hurt enough and stuck, so that he/she needs blood. Turns the only other compatible is Sherlock or Donovan. What is their reaction? Does John get them to make the donation? or do they even behave for once and surprise John with this?</p>
<p>Does that change anything between the two? Run wild." I ran wild.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

For the perhaps hundredth time, Sally sent a little prayer of thanks to her mother for the Wellingtons. _These are proper boots_ , she thought as her leg sank almost to the calf in mud, not the ones issued by New Scotland Yard, the ones that leaked and frayed after one bad downpour. Lestrade, ever the by the line man when it came to physical appearances, was struggling badly a hundred feet ahead of her, and Sally felt a weird tweak of exhausted superiority over him. After a moment, she shook her head, and lifted her foot from the mud and frowned at the noise it made, and stepped forward again.

Just ahead of Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes was struggling even more than any of them, and it made her laugh inside, and think of all the ways she wanted to say to Sherlock, “You started it” as if they were children. This wasn’t the first time she’s felt a rising of petty resentment against him, and it won’t be the last, and as much as she hated it and wished she was above it, it truly was his fault. If he’d simply waited, just for a split second, and not gone barging into the warehouse, the leader would’ve been caught unawares by the response team, and they wouldn’t be trudging through the muck of some terrible, forgotten farm in God knows where, hunting him down. Beside her, John was walking heavily but somehow gracefully through the muck, and she wondered if perhaps he had prior training in this. Did the British army train their doctors to walk competently through environments of all kind? What did an Afghanistan war vet know about mud and fields of dying peat?

Regardless, John shot her a look, one that they shared very rarely, one that said, “Fucking Sherlock,” and spoke of all of John’s woes and Sally’s irritations. What little pleasure there was to be derived from Sherlock knee deep in mud disappeared in the exhaustion at Sally’s limbs, because the adrenaline that had flowed freely when they had momentarily caught sight of the mob leader was beginning to dissipate, and they were so far into nowhere that no one’s cell phone had signal and their sense of direction was becoming rather desperately reliant on constellations, which only John knew, and not that well. She cracked her neck and readjusted the grip on her firearm, wondering why she was constantly finding herself a puppet to the whims of Sherlock Holmes and his doctor.

“Sherlock,” John said, and he sounded as frustrated as she did, “where the bloody fuck are we going?”

“The peat is trampled here.” Sherlock was pointing at what were nondescript areas to everyone else. “He’s been running through here.”

“Running?” said Lestrade, shucking a heavy leg out of the mud in disbelief. “Running how?”

“That’s the question!” And Sherlock was off again, though at a much, much slower pace than if they were at a London crime scene on well maintained roads. Sally snorted a little, and he shot her a withering look, and resumed attempting to traverse peat in the poshest and most ineffective rain boots ever made. 

For some reason, Sally thought of Anderson, his sly face and disdain for women who preferred fashion over practicality, and she felt a completely unreasonable exasperation at being one of those women. Her boots were unattractive by all fashion standards, but perfect for this work. Her jacket wasn’t as form fitting as she normally preferred, but it kept her warm without limiting her movement. Anderson. Fucking Anderson. All of his compliments felt backhanded now, like men who compliment a shapely arse but refuse to acknowledge she can fire a weapon or a girlfriend saying, “I just get on better with men” when she really means she alienates women because she views them as competition. He was the type of man, she thought now as she flicked a small bug off her arm, who pretended to like women who were “independent” and “intelligent” but really just didn’t like television and wanted to avoid actual dating or effort into a relationship. And she’d fallen for it, let herself be swayed into believing she was special because he cheated on his wife for her. 

It was why she came on this ridiculous, wet, pointless venture in the first place. Sherlock had proposed chasing him into the bog, and Anderson, emotional wounds still fresh from rejection, had spat that Sally would never walk a bog at night (because once, just once, she’d stepped in a puddle while in heels and had hissed in anger), and she volunteered almost instantly. If he looked a little regretful and worried for her, she pretended not to notice. She regretted it now, obviously, because apparently brilliance and excitement didn’t follow Sherlock Holmes everywhere; apparently, it was sometimes simply mires and disappointment.

Or not.

Quite a bit not.

None of them saw him coming. How he moved so quickly and silently in the thick, none of them were able to chalk up to more than “experience” and “practice” but it was terrifying as it happened. Something bright flashed ahead of Sally, and so used to the dark, she didn’t raise her weapon, and neither did Lestrade or John. The cry of pain was solid in the night, and Lestrade shouted something, but it was John that moved forward, and he was suddenly all she could see as he raised his (illegal, terribly illegal) Sigur and shot the man in the head. It was one of the cleanest hits she’d ever seen, fine by all standards, and amazing by the best. She had never seen someone shot in the head fifteen feet from her, but it was nothing like the movies. He simply crumpled. He didn’t fly backwards or looked stunned or anything dramatic. He was there, and then, with a fresh hole in his head, he was not. John didn’t flinch, not when he pulled the trigger, and not when Sally and Lestrade whipped their heads to look at him. It took a moment to realize the source of his blase dismissal of his execution.

In the mud, Sherlock gasped. After a moment, so did Sally.

The thing that had flashed was a knife, and it had been a sharp one, wherever it was, because it had cut deep. She could see the shockingly small fat reserves underneath his skin and the flash of white of exposed ribs, just before John ripped his jacket off and shoved it into Lestrade’s arm. In short order, his button-up followed, and he pressed it against the wound as a stream of heavy, angry swears fell from his mouth. “John,” Lestrade said, and in that moment, Sally and Lestrade and Sherlock watched Dr. John Watson, blogger and general practitioner, fall away, melt like candy in a warm dish, and Captain John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers Medical Corps appeared instead. He straightened, stock still, and looked at Lestrade.

His eyes weren’t cold, but flat and focused when he demanded, “The kit in the front left pocket.” Lestrade struggled for a moment before pulling out and handing over a battered looking and bulky canvas bag. John squatted beside Sherlock in a position that Sally, who took the occasional yoga class and enjoyed a creative position in bed or two, could not have held comfortably. Time spent squatting on inhospitable lands and surfaces, prepared to work she thought, and then John was pushing the bag back at Lestrade as he pulled out a large torch and a tightly wound pouch. Lestrade took the canvas and the pouch and without prompting, the torch, and turned its brightness on Sherlock. Out of the pouch came fast-absorbing gauze and antiseptics, and John bundled them into the wounds and pressed ever further down, willing through force and fear the blood to go back into the shaking body. 

Something that looked suspiciously like confusion flickered in Sherlock’s eyes as he looked at John, and John glanced up at the expression and grimaced. “You’ve been stabbed.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Cut,” John clarified, a bite to his tone. “Very badly.”

WIth a shaking hand, Sherlock indicated two fingers, in a gesture that might’ve been obscene if Sally didn’t see that he couldn’t quite twist his arm properly. John’s eyes widened, and with no warning, he ripped open Sherlock’s jacket and shirt with his free hand.

Two cuts.

And a lot of blood.

God, that was a lot of blood. 

John was staunching its steady flow with his button up, and then also with Lestrade’s, and he was saying something in rapid fire to Sherlock, but Sherlock, for once, wasn’t listening. A hand rose and gripped John’s arm as if involuntary, and the two of them are staring at each other with some sort of language to which Lestrade and Sally were not privy.

With a shuddering breath, Sherlock said, “The average person can lose 15% of their total blood before true hypovolemia sets in.” John nods as if Sherlock is teaching a class. “Upon approaching 30%, the victim will experience hypovolemic shock, and without appropriate and extreme medical care, will die.”

“I know,” said John, pushing the fabric of his shirt against Sherlock’s deepest wound, his eyes set forward in a manner so determined, Sally almost felt as if they are in a war right then. “Shut up.” Lestrade was holding his phone to the sky, looking for a mobile signal that wasn't holding.

With a flick of his wrist, John prompted the offering of the canvas bag, and now he rolled it out across his lap. Sally took a moment to allow herself surprise at the amount of medical supplies held within, many of which looked incredibly intimidating, but John was moving rapidly. He pulled from the canvas bags and handed kits that meant nothing to either of the cops at his side, but both accepted them without argument. For his part, Sherlock was still looking at John the way small children look at adults who fascinate them, and Sally saw, maybe for the first time, how thin he was. The average six foot tall man contained five and a half litres of blood, but Sherlock no doubt contained less, and a terrible pallor was creeping up his neck. For his part, John was ignoring the insistent stare, absorbed in the work at his lap. Sally saw a needle and thick thread, and she thought of how far they were from help, and the Captain crouched at her feet was back in a war zone. 

“Donovan,” he said, and she straightened at the command in his voice and the set of his shoulders that told her no hesitation would be tolerated. “Untangle this,” and a mass of plastic tubing was pressed into hands, against the cold metal of her ineffective gun, and she began to pull at them carefully but firmly, while John turned to Lestrade. “You have the best carrier of us. Run back and call 999. We need a helicopter evac immediately. We are approximately five kilometres southwest of Wiltshire proper, and we need every bit of AB negative blood they have.” The last part of his sentence seemed to make him grimace, and he jammed his hands into a pair of gloves from his pocket with anger. 

Lestrade ran back into the swallowing darkness, and Sally couldn’t think of anything more to do than stare at Sherlock with wide, disbelieving eyes. His face had gone from posh detached to glassy desperate in short order, and John was pressing the soggy flannel to Sherlock’s side with increasing fear. A little bit of his Captain mask slipped and Sally saw beneath it the flatmate, the best friend, imploring Sherlock to keep looking at him.

In the harsh light of the torch Lestrade had shoved in her hands, Sally saw the slightly off-kilter bend of John’s shoulder, and wondered if someone had whispered the same things to him that he now whispered to Sherlock, who took ever more shuddering breaths and was staring at John as if he could find the future in the pupils of his friend. Lestrade thundered back and said that a medevac unit was on its way, but that they had very little AB negative on hand. 

Before John could curse and lament, before Lestrade could despair, Sally stepped forward, her mouth moving of its own accord. “Of course he has AB negative,” she said, and she rolled up her sleeve as she spoke, and then worried at the way it crumpled at the crook of her elbow, and decided to shuck it entirely instead. After a moment’s hesitation, she laid it across the exposed portion of Sherlock’s chest, where the skin was prickling in the cold air, and he tore his eyes from John’s for the first time, puzzling at her. She yanked the sleeve of her shirt upwards and held her arm out as she spoke. “I have AB negative. That’s why I go to all the blood drives. I have AB negative blood. Can you do a transfusion here?”

Both Lestrade and John opened their mouths to protest, and Sherlock interjected with a harshly drawn breath and the rolling of his eyes into the back of his head, and John resumed his frantic pressure, shouting at Sherlock that he didn't have the right to die. Lestrade stared at the sky hopelessly, and Sally pushed her arm forward still at John, eyes wide. “John, please, you have to do something.”

He did.

He grabbed Sally’s outstretched hand and pressed it to the worst of the wounds, and then Lestrade’s to the second. As they bore down as hard as possible, John tipped Sherlock’s head back, and breathed into his mouth. Sherlock’s chest swelled, and Sally heard the voice of an instructor saying that only four percent of people who need CPR from a bystander live, and she heard John muttering obscenities and prayers and pleas beneath his breath as he did his compressions, and at some point, even through the flannel, Sally could feel the flow of blood begin to ebb, and she chose then to look at Sherlock.

Despite the posh boots, the ridiculous coat, the suits, the curls, Sherlock looked young. Young enough to be the boy you noticed in the hallways during secondary school and wished you had enough confidence to approach. The boy that floated through clubs, obviously part of the crowd you’d never be good enough to get into, but maybe you’d be cool enough for the night. The man who only just noticed you, before turning his head to someone more blatant, more needy, more seductive. 

Above him, John counted compressions and begged him to stay, and Lestrade pressed a blood covered hand to forehead, and Sally thought of the first time she saw Sherlock, strung out and terrified and brilliant. She could spot the cocaine rushing through his blood, but he had seen the hastily wiped hand print by the door that would prove the undoing of two hours of work. Half an hour later, a murderer was in cuffs and Sherlock was shaking and wrinkling his nose as Lestrade asked him where he planned to sleep. Sally had thought of the cousin in Edinburgh that everyone hated, who snorted away his inheritance and his potential and packed Sherlock away into the compartment of her mind that packed rich boys with too much time. It wasn’t until now that Lestrade pressed blood to the wrinkles of his brow and John demanded Sherlock stay, stay, _please stay_ , that she thought of the pain of someone so brilliant no one could understand, and the difference between the acidic twenty-something cocaine addict who rejected everyone and the acerbic, not quite burning but still shocking, brilliant, beautiful thirty-something that healed war veterans and solved crimes and restrained his comments to obvious infidelities instead of base fears and shame. 

Above her, she heard the steady whumpwhumpwhump of helicopter blades, and John thanked Jesus, even though he hadn’t asked anything of the man. Sally pressed her bundled cloth closer to Sherlock and thought that if he died under her hands, she’s never forget the blue of his eyes and the pale of his skin. Still, she stood when a paramedic took over the pressure, and she gestured her still-uncovered arm forward, and said over the thrum of the blades and the pull of the wind, “I’m his blood type!” A paramedic grabbed her and pulled her mouth to his ear, clearly confused, and she shouted, “He’s AB negative and so am I. Take mine!” She pushed her arm at him, and unlike John, he took it with an indication of understanding. The tubing still clutched in her hand was now understood to be field blood transfusion material. John had understood, but had put faith in the medevac, faith that someone other than him would pour what Sally was offering into Sherlock's arm. John was staring at the helicopter now, expression stressed but darkly pleased with the speed of its arrival, and Sally knew that more than once, more than should ever be allowed, Captain John Watson had needed a helicopter for a man he desperately wanted to save, and had seen nothing but blank skies.


	2. Chapter 2

They bypassed the local hospital entirely and ended up somewhere that had accents just this side of jarring, and a nurse was pushed at Sally with rapid fire instructions, and before she had the time to process, they were drawing blood. She had known since primary school how rare her blood was, but it wasn’t until now, that she grew ever fainter and bags were carried away with alarming speed that she knew she made something spectacular, at least in this moment, without trying. After some time, the nurses pushed biscuits and ginger ale into her hands and told her to rest. She let them push her back into a bed, still fully clothed, and she ate half a biscuit and sipped at the paper cup before she let the adrenaline seep fully from her body, and she fell asleep. 

When she awoke, she blinked into the hospital lights and wished she’d eaten the whole biscuit; her head pounded and her arm throbbed. But she wasn’t lightheaded or faint, and therefore she carefully swung her legs over the edge of the bed and used the mattress to steady herself as she stood. After a moment, she went to the nurse’s desk and asked where to find the men she’d come with, and was pointed down the hallway to a gloomy, under-cleaned waiting room, where she found Lestrade sleeping with his head against the wall. 

“Buggerfuck,” was the greeting she received when she shook him awake. Sally sat quietly as he readjusted his position and stretched his aching limbs, and he reached out and gently turned her arm towards him so that he could see the barely-there bruising at the bend. She tried not to think about his fingertips on her skin and how long it had been since someone had handled her without expecting anything in return, and he didn’t notice her trying not to notice as he hissed a little. “You saved his bloody life,” he said, releasing her arm with the same care he’d held it. He cracked his neck. “They didn’t have ‘only a little’ AB negative, they had fuck all.”

“How is he? Where is?”

“Surgery. Or post-care, I don’t know.”

“Where is John?” Sally was surprised he wasn’t keeping vigil in the waiting room, but Lestrade gave her a grim smile.

“Got back there somehow,” he said, tilting his head to indicate the swinging doors labelled, ‘Hotel Personnel Only.’ “Suspect it might’ve been an Army thing, not a doctor thing, but not sure.” Lestrade and Sally gave matching shrugs, which was something everyone did every once in awhile around the Sherlock/Watson team. The government trained and paid detectives sat in companionable silence for awhile, Lestrade leaning his head back again but not to sleep, and Sally delicately rolling her sleeves down and smoothing out the wrinkles from her nap. “God, that was awful.”

“Yeah,” agreed Sally. “He looked- I mean, he looked terrible.”

“Thank God he brings his own doctor.”

“His armed doctor. Wait, what about-”

“Local force is out there now. Took care of it while you were sleeping, only just got back now.” Sally grimaced and Lestrade waved a hand between them. “No, it is for the best you weren’t there. You were needed here. And I needed to-”

Lestrade broke off into awkward silence, and Sally rolled her eyes. “I’m not an idiot, you know. Top of my class at academy. John has an illegal handgun.” Lestrade looked away from her. “And you think this isn’t the first time he’s shot someone on a case. And you covered up for him tonight and those other times, and he’s never asked and you never tell.”

Finally rolling his head a little to look at her , Lestrade seemed to beg her a little with his expression, and she knew this little admission was painful. With it, Sally could easily, easily have his job, his pension, and possibly his freedom. With his record of taking unnecessary and somewhat illegal risks with Sherlock, no matter how the evidence had laid out the story when Sherlock came back -- came back in a swirl of a ridiculous coat and a mountain of proof of his innocence, and the sick look of someone who had spent a year getting the shit kicked out of him without no one at his side -- Lestrade still walked the finest of lines, even though he’d been right. 

After a moment’s pause, Sally said, “You knew he shot that mad cabbie, didn’t you?”

“Sherlock basically told me that night. How did you know?”

“Because he made a joke about it to John five minutes after when I was walking past, and they thought I hadn’t heard.” Sally grimaced. “I didn’t say anything because, well, that was a shit cabbie and the case would’ve been shit and I was being a very bad cop.” She pressed a hand against her forehead. “Sometimes, it is a bit easier when they just, you know, die. Saves time.”It is a terrible thing to say ever, and especially to her boss, but she was tired and literally drained, and it was easier knowing that the man who’d skinned three teenagers wouldn’t be skinning anything anymore. After a moment’s pause, Lestrade patted her arm and said no more on the subject, and neither did she.

Another couple of hours passed. Lestrade took a number of phone calls, and made a number more. Sally deleted fifteen text messages from Anderson who had heard there was a shooting in the bog and was clearly quite concerned, though he seemed too eager to make offhand jokes about it hopefully being Sherlock or John who got shot. Sally rolled her eyes, and John walked into the waiting room, face pale.

Blood was spattered on his shirt, and on his face, dried now to black, and he looked utterly exhausted. Lestrade looked at him as he was mid-conversation with the chief inspector, and he made a hand motion that showed his desire to know but his need to stay on the phone. John nodded at him and looked at Sally, who looked away and was worrying at her shirt cuff. She and John rarely spoke these days. 

After Sherlock had appeared to die, John simply stopped being around. Sally saw him once on the street, but he walked past her as if they’d never met before. He’d looked cold and strained, and maybe he hadn’t seen her, but he probably wouldn’t have stopped even if he had. The next time she saw him, she was in a Tesco far from home because she needed overnight things, because drowning herself in stupid decisions while Anderson’s wife was out seemed like a good idea. She hadn’t even realized she was in Westminster until she walked past an aisle and did a shuffle back when she saw John. He was standing in front of the shelves of tea, staring as if it was the hardest decision he’d ever made. In his arm was a basket; Sally saw there was just enough food to barely feed one. The tea stretched on, while John stared at it, not noticing Sally looking at him. After a few moments, he pressed a hand against his face, covering his eyes, his shoulders tensed. She was witnessing something very private, very broken, but Sally couldn’t look away. After a few moments, John looked up at the teas, set the basket on the floor, and was gone. 

Sally abandoned her basket as well, going home and ignoring Anderson’s calls and text messages, spending the night on her couch and wondering if anyone would ever cry in a tea aisle over her.

Now, John looked at her with the same intensity that he’d looked at the teas, which was alarming. He seemed to be choosing his words very carefully, judging by the way he kept inhaling to speak and then pressing his lips together. “Thank you,” he said, finally. She blinked. “Thank you for doing it. Without being asked.” There it was. The distrust. Sally flushed, not from embarrassment or humility, but from wondering when she had become the type of person that could be thought of as someone who let another man die in mud because of professional rivalry. “He wants to talk to you.”

At that moment, Lestrade was free of his phone call and an expression of pure relief crossed his face. “He’s awake,” he huffed. “Thank God.”

“Can’t be given morphine or anything, so he’s in a bit of pain and can’t sleep,” explained John, and Lestrade nodded. “But he wants to talk to Donovan first.” Lestrade raised an eyebrow, and John shrugged. “I’m just the messenger.”

“Where do I go?”

She was directed through a pair of doors she hadn’t noticed before and up a hallway to a closed, private room. After hovering at the door for a moment, she knocked lightly, and heard a posh, irritated voice say, “Come in.” It took a moment for her to control the roll of her eyes before she entered the room, and Sherlock clearly had noticed her hesitation. “Shut the door behind you.” At her glare, “Please, Sergeant Donovan.” The door clicked close.

There was a chair pulled close to the side of the bed that had Sherlock’s free hand; clearly John’s chair. There were still depressions in the bedding next to Sherlock’s side, where John had been leaning forward on his elbows. He’d been there when Sherlock woke from surgery. He was always there when Sherlock was in the hospital, and Sherlock was always there when John was in the hospital. There wasn’t an emergency room staff in London that considered attempting to enforce the “Family only” rule with either man. No one had been at Sally’s bedside when she woke, which was par for the course. Not that she was often in the hospital, but she wondered what it was like to awake in pain and find someone holding your hand. She flushed again, looking away from the hospital bed before settling in a stiffer chair at the end of and a fair distance from the bed.

She could feel Sherlock staring at her as she stared at the room. Basic hospital room, though private, and a little sparse. Was Sherlock rich? He dressed like it, and then took a flatshare with a stranger at a reduced rent place. He took taxis everywhere but often asked John for cash. He got takeaway constantly, then would go days without eating. “Working something out?” 

With a sharp moment, Sally looked at him. “A little.”

“So not at all.” Sherlock smoothed the bedding, the evidence of John’s concern disappearing with a fluid motion of his palms. “I asked you in here to-” He tilted his head at her, making a decidedly not-posh face, seeming to find the words stuck. “Because what you did was very... It was incredibly _noble_ ” he managed to make it a sneer “to do that.”

“Really? Noble? Like, what, I was expecting brownie points?” Hot anger was in her chest, or maybe the burn of embarrassment, she couldn’t tell. “See if I give you anything in the future.” 

“I’ll endeavor to avoid knives around you as often as possible.”

“Good. Cheers.” She stood, clenching her fists and moving for the door. She expected to stalk down the hallway, pass John and Lestrade in anger, maybe have a small cry in the bathroom, then find a way home. 

Her hand was already on the door when, “Wait, stop.” Against her better judgement, she turned to look at Sherlock, who had a hand up, and an expression of pain tightening his mouth. “Forgive me,” and it sounded insanely sincere, “I’m in a fair amount of pain and because of my history of opioid abuse, I cannot take anything stronger than paracetamol.” He gestured at her chair. “Sit down. Please.”

She sat. She waited. He was struggling just as clearly as John, and it gave her a moment to appreciate the change the years had brought. Before he disappeared, he had been snappish, easy to anger, quick to abuse, and downright flippantly cruel. He came back with the edges still there, but softened just a bit. He no longer used his skill to tear people to shreds for no reason, only when he was angered. He thanked people, very occasionally, though only when they’d done something any idiot could see was brilliant. 

On the other hand, John had lost the easy smiles, the effusive praises he gave. At the sign of any threat, he became colder and untouchable, and he glared at people who annoyed him instead of suffering them quietly. He handed out criticism more often. He no longer touched people casually, the little pats and brushes of hands that belied his people skills, honed over years of bedside manner practice. 

Sometimes, she hated Sherlock for what he took from John when he left. Sometimes, she hated John for letting Sherlock take it. 

“It is an incredible inconvenience to have such a rare blood type in this line of work, isn’t it?” 

“A bit, yeah.”

“Very lucky to have someone I know who has a whole body of it.”

This was how Sherlock thanked people.

“I was in that Tesco that day.”

This was how Sherlock stunned people. Sally looked at him.

“What?”

“The day. With the tea. You were just thinking of it, weren’t you.” Statement, not question. “I was two aisles over.” Sherlock grimaced and made to press a hand against his side, then clearly thought the better of it and curled his fingers into his bedding to hide his pain. “Two weeks before I jumped, John and I had a row over tea.” Sally stared at him, dumbstruck. “I had a tendency to drink all the tea, or lose it, and he hated coming home and not having tea in the house. He was particularly irritated that day, had lost a long time patient, and he was a bit... his version of cruel.” At this, Sherlock smirked, as if John’s version of cruel was a kitten’s version, but Sally saw the wince beneath the smirk, and knew that whatever John had said had been quite harsh. “I was angry, and I went and bought a year’s worth of tea bags to irritate him. I put them in all the cupboards in the kitchen. That day, he’d had the last. That’s why he was affected so.”

“Why were you there?”

“I was so close to coming back, but I had to wait a bit longer, and I’d found myself wanting to see him. Remind myself why I had done what I did, but it wasn’t effective. I regretted going.” He turned a sharp look to Sally, the look he gave when he was reading everything in her face and the set of her jaw. “Why did you leave without purchasing anything?”

With an embarrassed snort, Sally shifted in her chair and asked, “Didn’t figure it out?”

“You were lonely, weren’t you?” Question, but the past tense was laid over Sherlock’s desire to say aren’t you. Sally didn’t answer. 

After a moment, she gave in to the desire, and asked him why he was telling her this at all. “I am under the impression that when someone does something kind for someone else, that the expected return is similar kindness. I knew that you were wondering why the tea had upset John so, and I wanted to put the wondering to rest, though I do hope you won’t reveal to John that I was there, or that you saw him. He was not well.”

“So all I’ve got to do to get you to be nice to me is give you a little blood? Good to know.”

“Sergeant Donovan, I don’t think either of us have been very nice to one another.”

“I was fucking livid when you died, you know. Fucking livid. John was a mess, and Lestrade was going to lose his job. Then the tape came out, and you were so bloody noble on it, and everything went to shit. We had to completely reopen the investigation, and I had to drag John in for questioning again.” John had sat in the small, cold room, wearing an expression of barely masked fury and grief as he answered her questions. I never thought he was guilty for a minute. I told you. No, I didn’t know who Richard Brooks was, I found out when Sherlock did. Moriarty set the whole thing up. Because NSY was too stupid to see that it was impossible for Sherlock to do that. It isn’t any of your business, nor is it relevant, what he said to me on the phone. Because it was between friends. It has no bearing on your investigation. Why not put more effort into something that actually matters? “He was so angry.”

“Thank you for clearing my name.”

“You know I didn’t. You cleared your own name. I just signed off on the paperwork.”

“Still counts. You didn’t have to sign.”

“Didn’t have to be in the bloody marsh, either.”

“My deepest apologies for the inconvenience,” said Sherlock with a bite, and Sally grinned.

Silence reigned for some time, until Sally cast around for something to say. “Did John put you up to this? This gratitude?”

“John cares very much what other people think of me. I don’t know why. I’ve asked before, and he hasn’t told me. He did not explicitly ask me to thank you, but I know it makes him happy when I do things like this.”

“And you like making him happy?”

“Leading. Yes, I do. I’ve caused him a great deal of unhappiness. It would behoove me to take advantage of opportunities to relieve a small part of that.” He rolled his eyes at her again, and his face twisted. “We aren’t involved romantically. I don’t abide by sentiment and John has never expressed an overt desire for me in a romantic or sexual sense.”

“Overt?”

“I’ll leave you to your deductions.”

“You’re being very forthcoming.”

“I left half of my blood in a marsh, I haven’t slept for three days, and if I were inclined towards idiocy, I might say that perhaps having pints of your blood in me as led me to sentiment.” Sally couldn’t help but laugh at his expression. He favored her a very small smile. “With the exception of the Moriarty case, you did very well with the cases left in your charge during Lestrade’s forced administrative leave.”

Because there was little use in hiding emotions around Sherlock, Sally allowed her surprise to show. “Been keeping tabs on me?”

“I kept tabs on everyone.”

In the quiet part of her head, Sally heard the tape of Moriarty hissing at Sherlock. _Not just John. Everyone._ When she looked at him, she saw that he had noticed her making the connection, but he didn’t comment, and she didn’t pursue it. “Thank you, then, for noticing.”

Sherlock nodded tightly, and she rose to leave for good this time. He stopped her at the door again, and said, very quietly, quiet enough that both could deny it later, “Once you have finished entertaining dalliances with the village idiot to make yourself feel better about being thirty-three and single, I believe that you will become an extremely competent detective, and in doing so, will be far more likely to meet someone who values your skills and accomplishments, and not your willingness to be used and discarded repeatedly by someone who is barely worth noticing.”

John and Lestrade were in the hallway when she finally closed the door behind her, keeping her face low. “Oh, Christ, what did he say?” asked Lestrade, and she looked up at his frustrated tone, and John’s eyebrows shot upwards.

“Are you _smiling_?”

Sally shook her head and walked away, sure that somewhere in this hospital, there was a coffee machine, or maybe even a proper coffee shop with proper sandwiches. She would eat something and maybe kip on a sofa for a moment, while waiting for the okay to go home. Somewhere between the hallway, the sandwich, and the sofa, maybe the stupid, stupid little smile at her mouth would go away.

Maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> There is some definite medical fuckery going on here, I won't lie. This is why I majored in people skills, not people saving skills.


End file.
